| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Drunkard's Refuge: The Lessons of the New York State Inebriate Asylum. By John W. Crowley and William L. White. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. xii, 127 pp. $24.95, ISBN 1-55849-430-8.)
Drunkard's Refuge by John W. Crowley and William L. White examines the efforts of the country's first medically directed residential alcohol treatment center, or inebriate asylum, to treat and cure alcoholism. This asylum, founded in New York State by Dr. Joseph Edward Turner in 1864, became a focus of social conflicts and political intrigues and converted to an institution for the insane only fifteen years later. The conflict centered on beliefs about the cause of alcoholism. Was it a disease or a moral failing? If it was a disease, those afflicted bore little or no responsibility for their condition, and the proper treatment was medical. If it was a moral failing, then the sinner was responsible for the sin, and the proper cure was moral reform.	1
As Crowley and White note, Turner, whom they term the "Dorothea Dix of drunkards" (p. 20), did not invent the medical model of alcoholism that began emerging in the eighteenth century. Turner's innovation lay in the idea of an asylum for inebriates. The concept of asylum, or place of refuge, had been applied to other groups in the nineteenth century, most notably the insane, with great optimism that moral treatment could restore healthy functioning. The program of moral treatment incorporated healthy diet, exercise, rest, and recreation.	. . .

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